Skip to main content
Main

Potato Souffle with Meat

A baked potato soufflé folded with minced ham and eggs, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Souffle with Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then pass them through a ricer.

  2. Mix in the sweet milk, butter, pepper, and salt until creamy.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks thoroughly, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

Layer and bake

  1. Grease a baking dish with butter and layer half of the potato mixture in it.

  2. Add a layer of minced ham, then top with the remaining potato mixture.

  3. Spread butter over the top and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in the baking dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy, fluffy body that gives the soufflé its light, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the mixture, giving a smooth, tender custard-like base.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and lift the soufflé as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the potato mixture creamy rather than dry.
Minced ham
Adds savory flavor and salt-cured meatiness to the layered filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten to soft peaks and folded in gently. Overmixing knocks out the trapped air, so the soufflé will not rise properly in the oven.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, pepper, egg, ham):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, egg, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes